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Rarity

Gauging the relative rarity of the various emperors, empresses and other personages for whom coins were made since the time of Augustus and through that of Anastasius over 500 years later is a formidable task. The extant coins of the Roman empire have come into the hands of collectors as well as private and public institutions either because they were handed down through the generations or because they have been recovered after being lost by their original owners (and then handed down through the generations!). Since on the one hand new coins are being found all the time and records of how many coins were minted back then were never kept no one knows for sure just how rare or common any single ruler, coin type or denomination is. Rarity is also not linearly progressive in the sense that a ruler's length of reign is not necessarily a good yardstick for determining overall rarity. While there's obviously a general correlation with popular emperors with long reigns having many extant coins today that is only loosely indicative of how many coins were actually made during that period and, more importantly, how many have survived.

For example, if one were to add up all the remaining coins left of the top fifty rulers, whose individual reigns would add up to decades, you would still have fewer coins than many single, short-lived emperors such as a Quintillus or Otho. There are several reasons for this including the fact that the more ephemeral the ruler the less likely that they had access to an active mint or the required resources to run it. Of those that did perhaps their particular period was so troubled that little currency was being manufactured. In other cases it's just a matter of bad luck in that the particular ruler had most of his or her coins lost or melted down. And in yet others it is simply that the ruler came and went before the mints under his temporary control had any time to ramp up production.

However, polling existing collections and using the available historical clues one can come to some conclusions that will be reasonably accurate. For the very rare issues or even coins attributed to rare emperors or empresses a single hoard can dramatically alter the rarity scales as understood to be at any given moment. For what it's worth, a couple of tables are presented to provide a general idea of how rare or common coins are for each of the known emperors, empresses, caesars and others who had coins made in their names. A rarity of 1 means the coin is very common while a 9 is of extreme rarity. For the purposes of this scale then a rarity of 5 or higher is fairly rare and each successive number escalates this rarity exponentially.

With the exception of the late Roman Solidus and its various fractions gold coins are to be considered uniformly rare. Few collectors of Roman imperial coins will be lucky enough to own an Aureus or any other pre-Constantinian gold denomination.

Summary: The full Roman Imperial set has:

 A total of 135 emperors of which 34 were usurpers not counting Clodius Macer who was not hailed as emperor nor Haniballianus whose title was King of Armenia.  A total of 10 Caesars.  A total of 51 women (40 wives, 4 mothers, 4 sisters, 2 daughters and 1 grandmother)  5 emperors' sons and one friend (Agrippa)  A grand total of 204 persons (joint issues counted as one)

Note: The coins of usurper-emperors, Amandus, Aelianus and Sponsianus, are discounted by most numismatic experts as fakes. Coins attributed to Proculus and Bonosus are highly controversial and in the author‟s opinion mis-identified coins of barbarous origin. Coins minted in the name of Marcus alone, brother of Basiliscus with whom he shared the imperial title briefly, are not known. Additionally, coins in the name of Victoria, mother of Victorinus, were supposedly minted in copper, silver and gold but none are known to have survived. The 18th century historian Gibbon asserts that an Egyptian merchant named Firmus rebelled during the reign of Aurelian and minted coins in his own name but these, too, have yet to appear. Some arguably Roman issues were excluded from this tally such as Vindex, Antinous, Odovacar, etc.